In today’s technology-fueled marketplace, the underlying systems, automated processes, and communications channels become crucial to continuing and growing your company’s revenue stream and customer engagement. As has occurred so many times over the past decades, there is an accompanying swing of the centralized IT/decentralized IT pendulum, with customer-facing departments, such as sales and marketing, acquiring their own technology solutions from cloud or SaaS vendors to meet customer needs. In the best organizations, these technology decisions and business-sponsored implementations are done within the framework of sound IT planning and long-term integration goals. For such decentralization to work right, IT and marketing must work together to provide the solution framework that integrates the customer-facing with the back office with both groups tied into the plans and goals of the other so that both can move in parallel towards the same goals — satisfying the customer and increasing revenues. 

Our September CIO-CMO Forum 2011 will dive into the details on how IT and marketing work together at successful organizations. Right now, we’re interested in where you fall on the spectrum — how you and your IT department tie in to your company’s revenue metrics, customer satisfaction metrics, and marketing processes. Let us know in our Q3 2011 CIO Motivation And External Customer Satisfaction Survey. If you provide your email, we’ll send you a summary of the results.

Thank you,

Chip

By Chip Gliedman

After a wave of pretty abysmal attempts in the early part of this decade, virtual chat agents pretty much disappeared from the scene. However, the past couple of years has seen a new wave of implementations of this customer-facing technology with some large-company implementations, including “Frank” on the Verizon website (Ask Verizon); “Louise” at eBay France (Votre conseillère virtuelle); and “Anna” at Ikea (Have a Question?). Virtual chat sits in the interaction spectrum between search and live customer service agents and combines natural language processing, conversational interactions, and an (optional) animated persona.

Over the past few weeks, I’ve spoken to three different vendors in this marketplace — all of whom have seen an uptick in the their business over the past 12 months. The common themes expressed by all three — the ability to engage customers with a more conversational tone where questions are answered, rather than search results based on keywords presented; and common results of better sales and higher service call avoidance, indicate that virtual agents may make a good corporate “hire” in the right circumstances. Rough estimates of costs — about $0.25 per successful resolution of the customer problem.

Chip explains why customer service is an important facet of business to improve during the economic downturn, and details specific ways that companies can improve their customer service without breaking the bank to do so.

http://a964.g.akamaitech.net/f/964/714/1h/www.forrester.com/role_based/images/author/imported/forresterDotCom/Podcasts/BPA/ChipGliedman_Improving.mp3